Spill Monitoring at the LNG Canada project in Kitimat

2018-10-20 1 By lindorm

On October 2nd, a $40B liquified natural gas project got the go-ahead in Kitimat, British Columbia. A few days later, Lindorm CEO Dr. Ulf Erlingsson visited the dredging company Boskalis in Kitimat to fine tune the sediment spill monitoring that has been ongoing since July, using 3 SediMeter™ SM4 for detecting any spill in nearby eelgrass beds, and 1 additional instrument across the fjord for reference.

The LNG terminal will be built in the left half of this image. To the right is the active delta of the Skeena River.
A SediMeter™ monitoring site in the intertidal zone, protected by a cage against logs floating in the water.

A SediMeter™ reference site, in Kitamaat across the fjord.
Remarkably, a SediMeter™ inside this cage was broken off. We recovered the memory chip and managed to download the data. Thanks to the accelerometer and conditions-based monitoring we could analyze the force that had caused it to break: it had been exposed to shocks beyond the sensor range of ±2 g several times within a minute. Fortunately the data recorded until that date could be recovered. On another note, the cage was since lifted a bit to prevent it from acting as a sediment trap, as seen here.

A SediMeter™ platform for deploying from the surface in zones beyond the intertidal. Instead of a cage it relies on flipping over in case of being impacted by a log. To avoid a “*blind spot*” of sedimentation measurement between the steel plate and the first OBS detector, the end of the sensor is inserted in a depression in the plate. Note the copper tape on all surfaces except where there are optical detectors or LEDs.

The Skeena River delta just off the project site. Although you cannot see it on this cell phone photo, a bald eagle was sitting on the tree stump in the center.
Kitimat has until now been an essentially Native American town living on hunting and fishing, where grizzlies like this walk on the streets while bald eagles fly above and humpback whales jump in the fjord.